Advice Needed Switching from Sky Q to use Freesat & Plex

[NoahEvans]

Hi,

I've spent the last few days doing lots of research as I'm looking to leave Sky Q and go down the Freesat route. Instead of buying a Freesat box, I'd like to use my existing NAS and Plex server with the DVR function to watch & record live TV.

I've found a couple of solutions, but preferably I'd like to try the below - and so if anyone with more experience & a greater understanding than me can confirm that this will work then I would be very grateful.

Telestar Digibit Twin - link
This is my preferred option as it seems the cheapest but doesn't sacrifice the experience. My understanding is that, after changing the Wideband LNB on my satellite to a hybrid (link) then I should be able to switch the existing two cables coming into the Sky Q box, into the Twin. It should also be shown up in Plex DVR automatically, from what I have seen online (including Plex's official community-sourced tuners list).
However, I would like to confirm how many streams/recordings I'd be able to do at once through this setup. I would need to be able to record a couple of shows at once & watch TV at the same time. This is something I can currently do with Sky Q of course, but I wanted to check if this would work the same via the Twin & Plex - and how many.

I'd also like to check if I'd have to do anything to my dish besides changing the LNB, as I've heard cases where the dish needs to be moved to properly pick up all channels.

Many thanks in advance for any advice you can provide - I'm really hoping that I can switch away from Sky soon as the price has risen quite a lot in recent times!

 

[ozumo]

A mk4 Sky Quad LNB would also work. The dish shouldn't need to be realigned assuming the signal on Sky Q was acceptable.

With the Digibit Twin I'd guess you can record up to two channels simultaneously and not be able to watch something different at the same time.

 

[NoahEvans]

A mk4 Sky Quad LNB would also work. The dish shouldn't need to be realigned assuming the signal on Sky Q was acceptable.

With the Digibit Twin I'd guess you can record up to two channels simultaneously and not be able to watch something different at the same time.

Thanks. Does anyone have any other suggestions instead of the Digibit Twin then, so I can record more than 2 channels at that same time? Ideally not too expensive. I’ve seen some PCIe cards that I could use in a PC I have potentially?

 

[NoahEvans]

Would this potentially work? Via TVHeadend and then into Plex.

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[Adam792]

There's the Digibit R1 or a Triax TSS 400 (if you can get your hands on one) that both have four tuners.

The twin tuner doesn't necessarily mean only two channels at once, it depends on what the channels are. If two (or more) channels are on the same transponder (same frequency), then they use the same tuner and the second tuner remains free for another service.

 

[Satspot]

Would this potentially work? Via TVHeadend and then into Plex.

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I’ve just finished a setup this week using a Digibit Twin via TVHeadend and Kodi all running through an RPI4. At its very basic the Twin allows you record one channel,in my case Astra 28.2 while recording another on a completely different transponder. Of course you can dig down deeper in TVHeadend and configuration can be the skies the limit.